


Orange

by Kahvi



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-04
Updated: 2006-02-04
Packaged: 2017-10-19 03:00:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/196137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahvi/pseuds/Kahvi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written as part of the <a href="http://fanfic100.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://fanfic100.livejournal.com/"><b>fanfic100</b></a> challenge - <a href="http://kahvi.livejournal.com/513913.html">my table is here</a>.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Orange

**Author's Note:**

> Written as part of the [](http://fanfic100.livejournal.com/profile)[**fanfic100**](http://fanfic100.livejournal.com/) challenge - [my table is here](http://kahvi.livejournal.com/513913.html).

Lister picked up the orange left on the table, and examined it thoughtfully. Slowly, a cheeky smile spread across his face, and he tossed it into the air, catching it on the way down with the same hand. “Yees!”

“Pleased with yourself, are you?” Rimmer stood in the doorway, arms crossed, pretending to lean against the frame. Of course, not being solid, he would fall straight through the wall if he didn’t make a conscious effort to remain in that position. Somehow, it made his posture all the more annoying to Lister.

“As a matter of fact, I am, yeah.” He tossed the fruit into the air again, trying to grab the nearby banana while it was in the air and begin to juggle them, but he took too long, allowing the orange to fall to the table with an audible thud.

“You do realize what you made poor Kryten suffer through?” Rimmer said, smirking at the sight of the now slightly squashed fruit.

“Suffer? He got to meet the love of his life! How’s that suffering?” Lister began to peel and eat the banana gingerly.

“Ah, yes!” Rimmer waved a finger knowingly, and started walking towards Lister. “Without the aid of your helpful instructions in the noble arts of lying and disobedience, our mechanoid friend might never have gotten the chance to experience soul-searing love with an androgynous green pile of goo, only to have it cruelly snatched away from him just as they were getting close to first base.” He stopped, and shuddered slightly, grimacing. “Which, frankly, might have been a blessing in disguise.”

“Give it a rest, Rimmer.” Lister found a knife, and started dividing the orange into sections. The side that had fallen onto the table was wet and squishy, and he snorted a laugh as the knife plunged through it too quickly, spilling pulp and juice all over both him and the table. He quickly gave it up as a lost cause. “So he lost her. So what? If it weren’t for me, they wouldn’t even have met! At least they did get to meet. That’s more than many people get, you know. And he’s a mechanoid; you can’t really say he’s got the odds in his favor!” He popped a slice in his mouth, grinning. “I say well done him!” He tossed a chunk of peel over his shoulder, where it accidentally went straight through Rimmer’s right arm.

Rimmer flinched, then shook his head. “You really don’t get it, do you? You’re all caught up in that romantic ‘tis better to have loved and lost’ nonsense. You said it yourself; he’s a mechanoid! They aren’t supposed to go on dates or fall in love, they’re supposed to cook and clean. It’s like setting your washing-machine up on a blind date; awkward and embarrassing, and no laundry gets done for a month.”

“Yeah, well he did fall in love. I didn’t make that happen, it was all him.”

“Oh yes, falling in love with a pleasure GELF, what a wonderful achievement. What’s next for the Android of the Year; lighting gasoline-coated matches? Convincing pre-menstrual women to eat chocolate? A bunny-rabbit match-making service?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lister grumbled, trying to cut another slice.

“Anyway, I can’t believe that you, of all people, would be preaching this particular credo. ‘Tis better to have loved than lost indeed. What about Kristine Kochanski?”

“What about her?” Lister put the orange down, and glared.

“You were together – what – two weeks? Three? There’s something fundamentally wrong, if you ask me, with spending more time pining for a person than you actually spent in a relationship with them.” With this, he clasped his hands behind his back, and walked over to his bunk, where he sat down, pretending to bounce a little of the springs of the mattress, which of course could not really detect his non-existent weight.

“Yeah, well, no one asked you, Rimmer.” He picked the orange back up, and looked at it forlornly. “Why do you do that, eh? Why do you have to ruin everything?”

“Oh come now Listy, surely it’s not the orange’s fault,” chirped Rimmer from behind him.

“I’m talking to you, smeghead,” Lister burst out, turning around. “Why do you go out of your way to make people see the worst in a situation?” He rose from the chair, grasping the fruit in one gloved hand. Striding over to Rimmer’s bunk, he shoved the half-eaten orb in front of his bunk-mate’s face. As Rimmer recoiled slightly, Lister took a sizeable bite out of the citrus-fruit. He all but buried his face in it, lapping up the juices that spilled on his face with his tongue. Lister had a long tongue.

“What… What are you doing?” Rimmer said in alarm.

Lister got as close to the hologramatic face as he could without breaking trough it, and cocked an eyebrow. “I know you miss this,” he said, sounding amused.

“Miss what?” Rimmer sounded worried. His eyes flicked from Lister to the orange and back again.

“Eatin’. Drinking. All the pleasures of the flesh, man. You’d do anything to get your teeth into this, wouldn’t ya?” He tossed the orange from one hand to another right in front of Rimmer’s nose. The hologram was beginning to breathe, in as much as he could be said to breathe, erratically. “Now tell me you’d have preferred never to have eaten all your life, never to have known what this…” He took another bite, exaggerating the pleasure the taste gave him, “…Was like?” He looked at Rimmer’s face, and started laughing. “Come on man, I can tell yer gaggin’ for it!”

Rimmer swallowed. He seemed to be trying not to focus on anything, and his mouth kept opening and closing, as though he was about to say something.

“You are,” Lister exclaimed, “you’re desperate, man! It’s written all over yer face. Go on then, just one word to Holly and you can have one of these for your very own. Of course,” he took another bite, “it won’t be the same, and worst of all,” he stopped, and licked his lips slowly, very slowly, “you’ll be admitting that I’m right.”

Rimmer’s eyes finally came to rest on the fruit in Lister’s hands. In a still, small voice, he mumbled; “Yes… But you see, I don’t like… Oranges.”


End file.
